Ola,India’s largest cab acclaiming service, confirmed on November 17, 2015 that the company has raised $500 million in fresh funds from Didi Kuaidi (China’s popular and largest taxi service), Baillie Gifford and from the existing investors. Tiger Global, SoftBank Group, Falcon Edge Capital and DST Global are Ola’s existing investors who will still be accompanying again for the fresh funding. Other investors in Ola include Sequoia India, Accel Partners US, Matrix Partners, and Steadview Capital.

Running by ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd, Ola said,

“We will effectively utilized these funding to grow and glow in the current competitive market. We want to expand our presence across various categories and innovating mobility services.”

In September, Ola had grabbed $225 million from a total of $500 million as the deal was assumed to close with the firm value of nearly $5 billion. Ola now has over $1.3 billion as external funding after they have received the current funding. $1.2 billion has been raised alone in 2014. Ola raised $400 million from DST Global in April, $210 million from SoftBank Group of Japan in October.

Bhavish Aggarwal, CEO and Co-Founder of Ola, says,

“We are really eager to bring the smart and innovative onboard partners who can help us to reach our goals faster. We will continue to build for the local market through creative solutions like Ola Money, Ola Share, Ola Prime while we grow the mobile ecosystem in India.”

Ola, formerly called as Olacabs, was founded in the beginning of 2011 by IIT-B Alumni Ankit Bhati and Aggarwal Bhavish. This startup is growing day by day since then and till now it has grown by over 35 times in 2014 with 1 million booking requests a day. The incredible journey of Ola and the entrepreneur has always inspired other startups to move on and nurture the society with ease.

Ola has presently occupied its dominance over 2.7L cabs, 75k auto-rickshaws, and many Kaali Peeli & yellow taxis registered on its platform across more than 100 cities in India. Venturing into ‘Ola Cafe’-Food Delivery Service, ‘Ola Store’-Independent Grocery App as to compete with the worldwide popular Uber. Uber is already into e-commerce and food products in the US. It will be interesting to see the two giants making their way into other fields as well.

The company also focuses to be a one-stop transportation solutions provider and so Ola bought smaller rival TaxiForSure in a $200 million deal in March to increase its lead over Uber, and now captures 80% market share.